Quotes about happiness (5345 quotes, page 46)

“I think we all carry a depressive streak in us but most people just hide it. A lot of people think that entertainment has to be something loud, cheerful and happy. I don't buy into it. Depression can be very inspiring. At least for me it can be. The quiet aspects of life are very important, because let's face it, life is pretty difficult.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

NYROCK: Interview with Chris Cornell, October 1, 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20030919022841/http://www.nyrock.com/interviews/1999/cornell_int.asp,
On depression and suicide

Life , People , Thinking

“There is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

People

“The British tourist is always happy abroad as long as the natives are waiters.”

Robert Morley (1908–1992) English actor

The Observer (20 April 1958), as quoted in "Death of Baron De Kalb" https://books.google.com/books?id=k2QAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=%22I+thank+you+sir+for+your+generous+sympathy,+but+I+die+the+death+I+always+prayed+for:+the+death+of+a+soldier+fighting+for+the+rights+of+man%22&source=bl&ots=-93hJzoCYU&sig=tAag8ObQI-ZjiII56viczov02wM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VlYVVcuJI4KmNsazgYgL&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20thank%20you%20sir%20for%20your%20generous%20sympathy%2C%20but%20I%20die%20the%20death%20I%20always%20prayed%20for%3A%20the%20death%20of%20a%20soldier%20fighting%20for%20the%20rights%20of%20man%22&f=false (1849), by Benjamin Franklin Ells, The Western Miscellany, Volume 1, p. 233.

“It is very true that we ought to think of the happiness of others; but it is not often enough said that the best thing we can do for those who love us is to be happy ourselves.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Happiness if Generous
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Love , Thinking

“No sound doth great the still of night;
My mother land in silence lies;
Yet oft is heard an anguished moan
As Georgia in her slumber sighs. I stand alone … the mountains, shades
The slumber of my land caress.
O God! O God! when will we wake
And rise again to happiness?”

Ilia Chavchavadze (1837–1907) Georgian poet and politician; a saint of Georgian Orthodox Church

Elegy, p. 60
Anthology of Georgian Poetry (1948)

God , Mountain , Silence , Night

“Anyway, you learn a healthy respect for war, and I'm not happy with what's going on today. Uh, you know, our sterling President--um, I shouldn't get into this. Everybody's gonna kill me, but I'm not happy with him. I--I--if he had ever been in a war, he wouldn't have been so happy…so eager to send other people into war.”

James Garner (1928–2014) American film and television actor

On George Bush and the Iraq War.
Tavis Smiley interview (2004)

War , People , Learning

“He has everything, he cannot sleep, he gives nice gifts, he is not happy, but he would not trade, even for happiness, what he is….”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Sleep

“It is, I know, for I have experienced it perhaps twice in my life, an awful privilege to be too much loved and perhaps the kindest thing I ever did in my life was never to let Matthew know to what degree he had destroyed my peace and my happiness.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Love , Life , Peace

“President Reagan must be happy over how bad the weather's been this winter, because its the one thing no one's blaming on him. Theres nothing television news likes better than bad weather, and we sure get a lot of it in the United States.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

[Andy Rooney, w:Andy Rooney, 8, Weather, Years of Minutes, 2003, PublicAffairs, 978-1586482114]

Winter , Weather

“There's an obligation to try every route to happiness.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"The Question Mark Inside" (2008)

“True love is timid, as it knew its worth,
And that such happiness is scarce for earth.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love

“Good luck to all of our guests, hope you can find some happiness in your future endeavours…, …until next time, take care of yourself and each other.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

Springer's common beginning and ending to his lectures

Hope , Time , Future

“A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive and that's withing yourself. Within me I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy and it's all non-productive. I'm very sensitive. A sharp word, said by a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions but when all these are removed and you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something. I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

Hitchcock's Definition of Happiness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14dOICbwSIs (YouTube video), excerpt from CBC's interview 'A Talk with Alfred Hitchcock' (1964). Quoted in "Hitchcock's Secret to Happiness" http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/hitchcocks-secret-to-happiness/254769/ by Maria Popova, The Atlantic (20 March 2012).

People , Feeling , Thinking , Hurt

“The idea is to create a picture among the population that we're all one happy family. We're America, we have a national interest, we're working together. There are us nice workers, the firms in which we work and the government who works for us. We pick them — they're our servants. And that's all there is in the world — no other conflicts, no other categories of people, no further structure to the system beyond that. Certainly nothing like class. Unless you happen to be in the ruling class, in which case you're very well aware of it.”

Noam Chomsky book The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many

"The Unmentionable Five-Letter Word" in How the World Works, p. 121
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many, 1993

People , World , Family , Idea

“Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment. If he work in the full ethical sense that I have attempted to define, he is pulling back and disciplining his temperamental self with reference to some standard. In short, his temperamental self is, in an almost literal sense, undergoing conversion. The whole of life may, indeed, be summed up in the words diversion and conversion. Along which of these two main paths are most of us seeking the happiness to the pursuit of which we are dedicated by our Declaration of Independence? The author of this phrase, Thomas Jefferson, remarks of himself: "I am an Epicurean."”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "Democracy and Standards" (1924), pp. 137-138

Life , Sense

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter VI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Men , Fate , People , Pleasure

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life , War , Pleasure , Law

“And we think that this ultimate blessedness differs only in degree from the happy and joyful experiences of our lives. Whereas the truth is that it differs in kind. The joys, not only of the earth, but of any conceivable heaven - which we can conceive only as some happy and fortunate prolongation of our lives in time - are not of the same order as that ultimate blessedness.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 7.

Truth , Thinking , Time , Joy

“I have a particularly happy memory of a 's ability to score a penalty. I believe I am correct in saying that while papal infallibility is assured, the doctrine of the Church says much less about the infallibility of Cardinals. And even less about the infallibility of Paul McStay!”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Cardinal Winning Lecture (February 2, 2008)

Penalty , Memory

“There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drink of me this evening,” she says, very softly. There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge—of the heart as well as the mind—and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 20 (p. 408)

Life , Wisdom , Pain , Drink

“How gladly would I wander through some strange and savage land,
The lasso at my saddle-bow, the rifle in my hand,
A leash of gallant mastiffs bounding by my side,
And, for a friend to love, the noble horse on which I ride!
Alone, alone—yet not alone, for God is with me there,
The tender hand of Providence shall guide me everywhere,
While happy thoughts and holy hopes, as spirits calm and mild,
Shall fan with their sweet wings the hermit-hunter of the wild!”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Adventure, l. 1-8.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

Love , God , Hope , Horse

“Man enjoys the happiness he feels, woman the happiness she gives. This difference, so essential and yet so seldom noticed, has a marked difference on the whole of their respective behaviour. A man's pleasure is to satisfy desires, a woman's is chiefly to arouse them.”

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book Les Liaisons dangereuses

L’homme jouit du bonheur qu’il ressent, et la femme de celui qu’elle procure. Cette différence, si essentielle et si peu remarquée, influe pourtant, d'une manière bien sensible, sur la totalité de leur conduite respective. Le plaisir de l’un est de satisfaire des désirs, celui de l’autre est surtout de les faire naître.
Letter 130: Madame de Rosemonde to Madame la Présidente Tourvel. Trans. Richard Aldington (1924). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_130
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Pleasure , Feeling

“These experiences are not 'religious' in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not 'ineffable' in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. 'One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people'. The peak experience tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. 'For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience…”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972), p. 17

Love , Children , People , Books

“How imperious, then, is the obligation imposed upon every citizen, in his own sphere of action, whether limited or extended, to exert himself in perpetuating a condition of things so singularly happy.”

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)

Inaugural address (1837)

“It has sometimes been argued that in gaining Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had undermined her position in America. Without the French threat, why should the thirteen colonies stay loyal? Yet the loss of America had the unforeseen effect of securing Canada for the Empire, thanks to the flood of English-speaking Loyalists who, together with new British settlers, would eventually reduce the French Quebecois to a beleaguered minority. The amazing thing is that so many people should have voted with their feet against American independence, choosing loyalty to King and Empire over 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

Life , War , People , Loss

“High above all earthly lower happiness, the blessedness of the eight Beatitudes towers into the heaven itself. They are white with the snows of eternity; they give a space, a meaning, a dignity to all the rest of the earth over which they brood.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 33.

“Our deep urge to evolve to a more spiritually mature level of understanding and living, and to create a social order that promotes more justice, peace, freedom, health, sanity, prosperity, sustainability, and happiness, absolutely requires us to stop viewing animals as food objects to be consumed and to shift to a plant-based way of eating.”

Will Tuttle book The World Peace Diet

Source: The World Peace Diet (2005), Ch. 2

Health , Peace , Justice , Food

“Even in childhood's innocence of pleasure
Lives that destroying spirit which in time
Will waste, then want, the best of happiness.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Pleasure , Time , Childhood

“Nobody can ever quite say what's wrong exactly. But they all know it's evil. They all know 'corporate' is a dirty word. And if somebody's having fun or getting rich - disgusting! Evil! And it's always the death of this and the death of that. And people who think they're free aren't 'really' free. And people who think they're happy aren't 'really' happy. And it's impossible to radically critique society anymore, although what's so radically wrong with society that we need such a radical critique, nobody can say exactly…. Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color, and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think about is some stupid, lame problem with signifiers and signifieds.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

The Corrections (2001)

Death , Women , Men , People

“I have gradually come to one negative conclusion about the good life. It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted or fulfilled or actualized. To use psychological terms, it is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Person to person: The problem of being human: A new trend in psychology (1967)
Source: page 185-186.

Life

“Flies used to be happy-go-lucky, on their own; the sun’s out, have a fly about. Now, there’s little attacks going on.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 3 Episode 4
On Nature

Sun , Flying

“My whole life I have suffered from poverty and have faced many disappointments and pain, like a man is used to. That is why I want to make other people happy and want them to feel at home.”

Jim Jones (1931–1978) founder and the leader of the Peoples Temple

(1978). Translated back from Dutch to English, indirectly sourced, Messiahs: The vision and prophecies for the Second coming by John Hogue

Life , Pain , People , Disappointment

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay IV: "Ad Valorem," section 77.
Unto This Last (1860)

Love , Life , Help , Joy

“The surrender and succeeding jubilation was rightly American but, as Admiral Fraser appreciated, Britain and the Commonwealth had now been at war for six long years less a day. If the forenoon had been American, then the evening would be British. The last sunset ceremony had been carried out on the evening of September 2,1939. Since then the White Ensign had flown in every ship by day and night. Admiral Fraser ordered the resumption of sunset routine as from September 2, 1945 and invited all the senior officers of British ships in Tokyo, and a token number of sailors from each, to witness the ceremony in his flagship. He was dissuaded from firing a sunset gun in case some trigger-happy American or Japanese thought the war had re-started.”

Louis Le Bailly (1915–2010) Royal Navy admiral

War , Night

“Do we have to let every tree stay up and rot in the way that all our forests will turn into impassable thickets that are nicely called virgin forests? And just in order to ensure that every furniture beetle and cockroach can live a diverse and happy life. We the Finns are close to nature but why would we conserve so much that we run out of bread?”

Sauli Niinistö (1948) 12th president of Finland

Niinistö, the leader of the National Coalition Party, criticised the Natura 2000 environmental protection programme on 17 May 1997.
Source: Niinistö haukkui Natura 2000 -ohjelman "Miksi suojelisimme leivän suustamme?" http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000003625116.html Helsingin Sanomat. 18 May 1997. Retrieved 13 July 2017.

Life , Way , Nature , Tree

“Happiness is the gauge that measures your relationship with God.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 25

God , Gauge

“There was a plea from honourable Members relating to the need for formal Gross National Product figures. Such figures are very inexact even in the most sophisticated countries I think they do not have a great deal of meaning, even as a basis of comparison between economies. That other countries make use of them is not, I think, necessarily a good reason to suppose that we need them. But, although I am not entirely clear what practical purpose they would serve in Hong Kong, I am sure they would be of interest. I suspect myself, however, that the need arises in other countries because high taxation and more or less detailed Government intervention in the economy have made it essential to be able to judge (or to hope to be able to judge) the effect of policies, and of changes in policies, on the economy. One of the honourable Members who spoke on this subject, said outright, as a confirmed planner, that he thought that they were desirable for the planning of our future economic policy. But we are in the happy position, happier at least for the Financial Secretary where the leverage exercised by Government on the economy is so small that it is not necessary, nor even of any particular value, to have these figures available for the formulation of policy. We might indeed be right to be apprehensive lest the availability of such figures might lead, by a reversal of cause and effect, to policies designed to have a direct effect on the economy. I would myself deplore this.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 25, 1970, page 495.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Hope , Exercises , Thinking , Change

“The establishment and maintenance of sound and fair social conditions; so that there should be no oppression nor injustice, but a square deal for everybody; so that the strong should not be permitted to prey upon the weak; so that the law of helpfulness should prevail, instead of the law of ravine … such sound and fair social conditions would bring to the community in which they were established and maintained, unexampled, and marvelous prosperity; and this prosperity and peace and happiness would promptly advertise themselves and set up an irresistible attraction. Such a society as this would be a magnet that would draw to itself, all the children of men. They would all want to be in it.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: The Nation and the Kingdom (1909), pp. 4-5

Men , Children , Peace , Law

“Lucid intervals and happy pauses.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

History of King Henry VII, III (1622)

“Frankly, I think it's bad for former presidents. I like the model of President Ford and my dad. When they got off the stage, you get off the stage. It's somebody else's turn, and I don't think it's good for the country nor the presidency for me to be criticizing my successor, and I don't intend to do that. Nor do I intend to be giving you my opinion, on the latest issue. So you're not going to see much of me, and I'm perfectly content with that. I'm a happy guy, I really am.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2011, Speech at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation (2011)

Guy , Thinking , Country

“If a man has no humaneness what can his propriety be like? If a man has no humaneness what can his happiness be like?”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter III

“Well, when music "moves" someone, it doesn't necessarily have to be in a positive direction. Some people certainly get moved by darker music, and there are all sorts of emotions which music can create that are interesting -- aggression, foreboding, anger, fear. Not everyone wants to feel happy all the time :)”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

People , Fear , Music , Feeling

“No, I never wish that. I don't intend to die till I've enjoyed my life. Everyone has a right to happiness and sooner or later I will have it. Youth, health and freedom were meant to be enjoyed and I want to try every pleasure before I am too old to enjoy them.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Life , Health , Pleasure , Youth

“Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

49
Empire

History

“As long as Fortune wanted me
to keep on hoping for happiness
I took pleasure in amorous thoughts
and wrote down how they made me feel.
But Love, afraid that what I write
might serve free hearts as a warning,
clouded my inspiration with torment
to keep his deceits from coming to light.
O you whom Love has made the slaves
of various passions! When you read
in one small book such varied cases
know that they're pure truths, not tales,
and that your own experience in love
will lead you through my verses' meaning.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Richard Zenith, Sonnets and Other Poems (2009)
Lyric poetry, Sonnets, Enquanto quis Fortuna que tivesse

Love , Pleasure , Truth , Books

“What on earth should we do if we had no matches to make, or mar; no "unfortunate attachments" to shake our heads over; no flirtations to speculate about and comment upon with knowing smiles; no engagements "on" or "off" to speak our minds about, nosing out every little circumstance, and ferreting out our game to their very hole, as if all their affairs, their hopes, trials, faults, or wrongs, were being transacted for our own private and peculiar entertainment! Of all forms of gossip — I speak of mere gossip, as distinguished from the carrion-crow and dunghill-fly system of scandal-mongering — this tittle-tattle about love-affairs is the most general, the most odious, and the most dangerous.
Every one of us must have known within our own experience many an instance of dawning loves checked, unhappy loves made cruelly public, happy loves embittered, warm, honest loves turned cold, by this horrible system of gossiping about young or unmarried people…”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 8

Love , People , Smile , Hope

“He [ Richard Wagner ] was very happy but very nervous [Renoir proposed him to paint his portrait]... In short, I think I spent my time well, thirty five minutes is not long, but if I had stopped sooner it would have been better, because my model [Wagner] ended up by losing some of his good humor, and he became stiff. I followed these changes too closely [in the portrait]... At the end Wagner asked to see it. He said 'Ah! Ah! It's true that I look like a Protestant minister.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

But I [Renoir] was very happy it wasn't too much of a flop: There is something of that admirable face in it'
Quote of Renoir, in his letter to a friend, 15 Jan. 1882; as cited in 'Pierre Auguste Renoir - Richard Wagner', text of museum D'Orsay http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/richard-wagner-11042.html?no_cache=1
At the beginning of 1882, Renoir was travelling in the south of Italy and visited Palermo where Wagner was staying. Renoir proposed a short sitting for the following day and Wagner agreed; he had just finished his 'Parsifal'.
1880's

Thinking , Change , Time , Painting

“In the first Manifesto that we launched on the 8th of March, 1910, from the stage of the Chiarella Theater in Turin, we expressed our deep-rooted disgust with, our proud contempt for, and our happy rebellion against vulgarity, mediocrity, the fanatical and snobbish worship of all that is old, attitudes which are suffocating Art in our Country.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910
Source: Rainey et al. (eds.) Futurism: An Anthology, (2009), p. 64 : Lead paragraph

Art , Country

“Tis not possessions that bring happiness.”

Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441–1494) Italian writer

La roba non fa mai l' uomo beato.
Act IV, scene vi
Timone (c. 1487)

“I WANTED nothing more than to be a foreign filmmaker, but of course I was from Brooklyn, which was not a foreign country. Through a happy accident I wound up being a foreign filmmaker because I couldn’t raise money any other way.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

As quoted in the New York Times, That’s Amore: Italy as Muse: Woody Allen on Italian Movies and ‘To Rome With Love’ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/movies/woody-allen-on-italian-movies-and-to-rome-with-love.html?_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=MO-E-FB-SM-LIN-TAI-061912-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click, June 15, 2012.
Others

Money , Way , Country

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Actually by Stendhal: "La beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur" (Beauty is no more than the promise of happiness), in De L'Amour (1822), chapter 17
Misattributed

Beauty

“"Another situation generally exposed to ressentiment danger is the older generation's relation with the younger. The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation. Yet this source of ressentiment is also subject to an important historical variation. In the earliest stages of civilization, old age as such is so highly honored and respected for its experience that ressentiment has hardly any chance to develop. But education spreads through printing and other modern media and increasingly replaces the advantage of experience. Younger people displace the old from their positions and professions and push them into the defensive. As the pace of “progress” increases in all fields, and as the changes of fashion tend to affect even the higher domains (such as art and science), the old can no longer keep up with their juniors. “Novelty‟ becomes an ever greater value. This is doubly true when the generation as such is seized by an intense lust for life, and when the generations compete with each other instead of cooperating for the creation of works which outlast them. “Every cathedral,” Werner Sombart writes, “every monastery, every town hall, every castle of the Middle Ages bears testimony to the transcendence of the individual's span of life: its completion spans generations which thought that they lived for ever. Only when the individual cut himself loose from the community which outlasted him, did the duration of his personal life become his standard of happiness.” Therefore buildings are constructed ever more hastily—Sombart cites a number of examples. A corresponding phenomenon is the ever more rapid alternation of political regimes which goes hand in hand with the progression of the democratic movement. But every change of government, every parliamentary change of party domination leaves a remnant of absolute opposition against the values of the new ruling group. This opposition is spent in ressentiment the more the losing group feels unable to return to power. The “retired official” with his followers is a typical ressentiment figure. Even a man like Bismarck did not entirely escape from this danger."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life , People , Youth , Age

“My attitude toward life was also my attitude toward science. Jesus said one must be born again, must become as a little child. He must let no laziness, no fear, no stubbornness keep him from his duty. If he were born again he would see life from such a plane he would have the energy not to be impeded in his duty by these various sidetrackers and inhibitions. My work, my life, must be in the spirit of a little child seeking only to know the truth and follow it. My purpose alone must be God's purpose - to increase the welfare and happiness of His people. Nature will not permit a vacuum. It will be filled with something. Human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill… With one hand in the hand of a fellow man in need and the other in the hand of Christ, He could get across the vacuum and I became an agent. Then the passage, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," came to have real meaning. As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke the answer was there. Why, then, should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with a willing man in a laboratory? Some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

William J. Federer (2003), George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith in His Own Words http://books.google.es/books?id=Uyktcxy4MHkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 68.

Life , God , People , Truth

““The essence of happiness consists in an act of the intellect.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica) … What is implicit in this sentence? This is implicit: the fulfillment of existence takes place in the manner in which we become aware of reality; the whole energy of our being is ultimately directed toward attainment of insight. The perfectly happy person, the one whose thirst has been finally quenched, who has attained beatitude—this person is the one who sees. The happiness, the quenching, the perfection, consists in this seeing.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Happiness and Contemplation (1958), p. 58

Reality , Personality , Perfection

“… That's all it takes to get you back to the late 18th century. Three grandfather's lifetimes. That's how close we are to it. And, yet, that world has disappeared so totally, it's like fairyland. Thatched cottages, meadows, happy peasants. A golden age. Garbage, all that. Nasty, brutish, and short - that's what life was all about. And dirty. And boring. And it had been like that for thousands of years! And then, suddenly, the whole complex polluted overpopulated phrenetic nonstop stressful high tech rat race that is the modern world… Life was suddenly no longer as simple as it had been. And the extraordinary thing is, none of that was planned.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections 2 (1994), 1 - Revolutions

Life , Age , World

“The problem is, eternity is barred to humans, and so humans, all too painfully aware of that and entertaining little hope of appealing against that verdict of fate, seek to stifle and deafen their tragic wisdom in a hubbub of frail and fleeting pleasures. This admittedly being a false calculation—for the same reason which prompted it (that tragic wisdom can never be chased or conjured away for good)—they condemn themselves, whatever their material wealth, to perpetual spiritual poverty: to continuous unhappiness (‘A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself to be’). Instead of seeking the way to happiness within the limits of their predicament, they take a long detour, hoping that somewhere along the route their odious and repulsive destiny may be escaped or fooled—only to land back in the despair that prompted them to start on their voyage of (dearly wished for, yet unattainable) discovery. The only discovery humans can possibly make on that voyage is that the route they have taken was but a detour that sooner or later will bring them back to the starting line.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

[paraphrasing the view of Seneca], p. 34.
The Art of Life (2008)

Wisdom , Fate , Pleasure , Hope

“Virtue, who was of squalid look and dress, said, if you obey me you will adorn yourself not with ornament nor beauty that passes away and perishes, but with everlasting and precious graces. And we are persuaded that everyone who flees from what is superficially good and follows what is reckoned hard and foolish finds happiness awaiting him. For Vice, veiling her actions in the beauties which properly belong to Virtue and are genuine, enslaves groveling people.”

Justin Martyr (100–165) early Christian martyr

Second Apology, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 42

People , Beauty

“All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 23 (pp. 174-175)

“Neither in the ancient pagan world nor in any other culture has human history ever been thought to have an overarching significance. In Greece and Rome, it was a series of natural cycles of growth and decline. In India, it was a collective dream, endlessly repeated. The idea that history must make sense is just a Christian prejudice. If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itsel£. Looking for meaning in history is like looking for patterns in clouds.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Nietzsche's Optimism (p.47-8)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Dreams , History , Idea

“Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

https://owlquote.com/quotes/happiness-is-the-only-2jy3r26
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

Life , Madness

“Questions and answers click into each other like cogs of a machine. Each person has nothing but quite definite tasks. The various professions are concentrated at definite places. One eats while in motion. Amusements are concentrated in other parts of the city. And elsewhere again are the towers to which one returns and finds wife, family, gramophone, and soul. Tension and relaxation, activity and love are meticulously kept separate in time and are weighed out according to formulae arrived at in extensive laboratory work. If during any of these activities one runs up against a difficulty, one simply drops the whole thing; for one will find another thing or perhaps, later on, a better way, or someone else will find the way that one has missed. It does not matter in the least, but nothing wastes so much communal energy as the presumption that one is called upon not to let go of a definite personal aim. In a community with energies constantly flowing through it, every road leads to a good goal, if one does not spend too much time hesitating and thinking it over. The targets are set up at a short distance, but life is short too, and in this way one gets a maximum of achievement out of it. And man needs no more for his happiness; for what one achieves is what moulds the spirit, whereas what one wants, without fulfillment, only warps it. So far as happiness is concerned it matters very little what one wants; the main thing is that one should get it. Besides, zoology makes it clear that a sum of reduced individuals may very well form a totality of genius.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Love , Life , Family , Way

“We don't want teenagers to write violent poems, horrifying stories, explicit lyrics and rhymes; they're ugly, in precisely the way that we are ugly, and out of protectiveness and hypocrisy, even out of pity and love and tenderness, we try to force young people to be innocent of everything but the effects of that ugliness.So we censor the art they consume and produce, and prosecute and suspend and expel them, and when, once in a great while, a teenager reaches for an easy gun and shoots somebody or himself, we tell ourselves that if we had only censored his journals and curtailed his music and video games, that awful burst of final ugliness could surely have been prevented. As if art caused the ugliness, when of course all it can ever do is reflect and, perhaps, attempt to explain it.Let teenagers languish, therefore, in their sense of isolation, without outlet or nourishment, bereft of the only thing that makes it all bearable: knowing that somebody else has felt the way that you feel, has faced it, run from it, rued it, lamented it and transformed it into art; has been there, and returned, and lived, for the only good reason we have: to tell the tale.How confident we shall be, once we have done this, of never encountering the ugliness again! How happy our children will be, and how brave, and how safe!”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Nanny Nation

Love , Children , People , Art

“Anyway, I would not be happy to see a beautiful, well-proportioned woman, no matter from which point of view, however extravagant, not only lose her beauty in order to, I would say, increase in size according to the law of vision, but no longer appear beautiful, and, in fact, become monstrous.”

El Greco (1541–1614) Greek painter, sculptor and architect

Quote from the marginalia, which El Greco inscribed in his copy of Daniele Barbaro's translation of Vitruvius' De architectura; as quoted by Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis, The Emergence of Modern Architecture: A Documentary History from 1000 to 1810 https://books.google.com/books?id=4xB9k7-Neb8C&pg=PT184; Routledge, New York, 2004) p. 165

Law , Beauty , Appearance

“Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"The Wall and the Books" ["La muralla y los libros"] (1950)
Variant translation: Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Music , Time

“Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it, it's multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It's almost always laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express despair in dance music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 156
Testimony (1979)

Music , Idea , Tear , Laughter

“Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Notes
Queen Mab (1813)

Nature

“What good are all these books to you? You can't eat them! How can they make you happy?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Books

“The compliments you are about to pay could only sadden me, because what you love in our dear peninsula is exactly the object of our hatreds. Indeed, you crisscross Italy only to meticulously sniff out the traces of our oppressive past, and you are happy, insanely happy, if you have the good fortune to carry home some miserable stone on which our ancestors have trodden.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Quoted in: Anthony L. Geist, Jose B. Monle-N, Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America. Taylor & Francis, 1999, p. 57.
1910's, Futurist Speech to the English' (1910)

Love , Home , Past

“I am simply painting concrete representation of abstract emotions such as innocent love, ordinary happiness. I do want an emotional response. And I paint about emotions, not about lines. The truth is that it's not the lines that express the emotion. It's the scale of the composition. You know, if you go into a room that has perfect scale, you feel it... If the painting has perfect scale, it moves you. And you have different scale to show different emotions. It's the space between the lines that counts.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

after 2000, Agnes Martin: Between the Lines', 2002

Love , Truth , Feeling , Painting

“I would be happy to have a gay child. He would be a Boy Scout, and he would teach all the other Boy Scouts how to build a fire with two sticks and a back-handed compliment.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Boy , Scouting

“Liberal philosophy, at this point, ceases to be empirical and British in order to become German and transcendental. Moral life, it now believes, is not the pursuit of liberty and happiness of all sorts by all sorts of different creatures; it is the development of a single spirit in all life through a series of necessary phases, each higher than the preceding one. No man, accordingly, can really or ultimately desire anything but what the best people desire. This is the principle of the higher snobbery; and in fact, all earnest liberals are higher snobs.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Life , People

“There was another rai in those parts, whose rule extended over sea and land, a Brahmin named Pandya Guru. He had many cities in his possession, and his capital was Fatan, where there was a temple with an idol in it laden with jewels… The rai, when the army of the Sultan arrived at Fatan, fled away, and what can an army do without its leader? The Musalmans in his service sought protection from the king’s army, and they were made happy with the kind of reception they met. 500 elephants were taken. They then struck the idol with an iron hatchet, and opened its head. Although it was the very Kibla of the accursed gabrs, it kissed the earth and filled the holy treasury.”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

Pattan (Tamil Nadu) in the reign of Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians,Vol. III, p. 550-551
Dawal Rani-Khizr Khani

Kiss , Parting , Sea

“To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am — a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions — can be so happy as he can be in the United States.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

On Being An American (1922)
1920s

Men , World , Feeling , Country

“Mind you, I don’t know why people get so fixated on happiness, which always eludes them, when there are so many other invigorating experiences available, like rage, jealousy, disgust, and so forth.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Some Hope, Chapter 7

People , Jealousy , Rage

“The next matter which by God's help I accomplished, was the repetition of names and titles of former sovereigns which had been omitted from the prayers of Sabbaths and Feasts. The names of those sovereigns of Islam, under whose happy fortune and favour infidel countries had been conquered, whose banners had waved over many a land, under whom idol-temples had been demolished, and mosques and pulpits built and exalted, the fragrant creed had been extended, and the people of Islam had waxen strong and warlike, the names of these men had fallen into neglect and oblivion. So I decreed that according to established custom their names and titles should be rehearsed in the khutba and aspirations offered for the remission of their sins.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 328
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Men , God , People , Strong

“If I woke up tomorrow morning and it was just a dream, it would be the best dream I've ever had, and I would be ― I would not be happy to be waking up!”

Leona Lewis (1985) British singer-songwriter

laughter
The Xtra Factor: Winner's Story 2006
Upon winning The X-Factor

Dreams , Laughter

“Confucius was not so much a philosopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what one is tempted to call the elementary scene of ideology, its zero-level, which consists in asserting the (nameless) authority of some substantial Tradition.”

Slavoj Žižek book Living in the End Times

Source: Living in the End Times (2010), Chapter One: Denial: The Liberal Utopia

Truth

“This vice [Pride] does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries of others.”
Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis.

Thomas More book Utopia

Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6REuAAAAMAAJ&q=%22haec+non+suis+commodis+prosperitatem+sed+ex+alienis+metitur+incommodis%22&pg=PA306#v=onepage
Alternate translation: [Pride] measures her prosperity not by her own goods but by others' wants.
Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 9 : Of the Religions of the Utopians

“I don't care about weight things, but it's more important to me that I'm happy and I feel good. What happens to my body is going to happen and people have to live with that or I'll quit this job.”

Suvi Koponen (1988) Finnish model

As quoted in Missä he ovat nyt? Mallikoulun Suvi - documentary (January 2008)

People , Feeling

“I'm not a pessimist. Maybe I don't have a primitive feeling of happiness, that is true. Sometimes my color is happy but not the expression.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Color , Feeling

“We will do all we can to insure peace… but if war is imposed upon us we will be together shoulder to shoulder as in the last war to strive for the happiness of mankind.”

Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974) Marshal of the Soviet Union

Quoted in "Odd World: A Photo-reporter's Story" - Page 299 - by John Phillips - 1959

War , Peace

“At present and especially in academia, there is widespread doubt and agnosticism with respect to the very existence of God. But if we don't know that there is such a person as God, we don't know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other and our world. This is because (from the point of view of the model) the most important truths about us and them, is that we have been created by the Lord, and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence. We don't know what our happiness consists in, and we don't know how to achieve it. We don't know that we have been created in the image of God, and we don't grasp the significance of such characteristically human phenomena as love, humor, adventure, science, art, music, philosophy, history, and so on.”

Alvin Plantinga book Warranted Christian Belief

[2000, Warranted Christian Belief, 9780195131925, 217, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.vi.ii.iv.ii.html]

Love , God , Truth , World

“The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1]

Love , Friendship , Pleasure , Intelligence

“I graciously accept defeat. We lost by a very small margin. Democracy is a process. It is up to us to make it work. The MDP has always asked for a government elected by the people. Today is a happy day for the Maldives - we now have an elected government.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Quoted on BBC News, "Maldives election: Abdulla Yameen wins run-off vote" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24974019, November 16, 2013.

People , Democracy

“Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wilderness", p. 199.

“It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Attributed as a statement to his Bible class (1 April 1905) in "The Loneliness of John D. Rockefeller", Current Literature (November 1906) vol. 41 no. 5,

Men , Wealth

“As an adult, I think I wanna be living in New York City and help a lot of homeless people and try to become vegan and maybe be a band with some good friends and be making a living and be happy with how much money I have.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Rachel on her adult goals.
Off & On Broadway documentary (2006)

Money , People , Thinking , Help

“Everything but happiness is neurosis.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Feb. 15, 1936
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

“Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Women , Heart

“It is wrongly held by many that to be happy one must have the admiration and respect of a great many people; but the esteem of one's own circle is essential. Stéphane Mallarmé, deeply beloved by a few disciples, was far happier than a celebrated man who knows that his reputation is questioned by those whom he admires. The monastery had brought peace to innumerable souls through its singleness of thought and purpose.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

People , Peace , Soul , Question

“I know I will never be happy but I know I can be gay! Remember I told you Kazan said I was the gayest girl he ever knew and, believe me, he has known many. But he loved me for one year and once rocked me to sleep one night when I was in great anguish. He also suggested that I go into analysis and later wanted me to work with Lee Strasberg. Was it Milton who wrote: "The happy ones were never born?"”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

I know at least two psychiatrists who are looking for a more positive approach.
In a letter to her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, in 1961, quoted in Marilyn's Last Sessions (2010) by Michel Schneider

Love , Girl , Sleep , Night

“He is too blest that his own Happiness knows,
And Mortals to themselves are greatest Foes.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Fab. II: Of the Dog and Shadow
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)

“Hope is love's happiness, but not its life;—
How many hearts have nourished a vain flame
In silence and in secret, though they knew
They fed the scorching fire that would consume them!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Life , Secret , Hope

“Doc says the Company set-up is just one big happy family, and the idea that it is a non-profit corporation is the biggest joke since women were invented.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Red Planet

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 4, “Lowell Academy”, p. 44

Women , Family , Idea

“If you look on their lawn, there are… it looks like a tent city of reporters. I don't know what insight they think they're going to glean from these people's grief, but if there's ever a situation where someone who's just lost their daughter has anything to say other than "this sucks," I'd be happy to see a news crew on their lawn, but until then, why are these people there?”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

On exploitative media coverage of the Danielle Van Dam case, Paley Center for Media interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OymCVXtl3-4&feature=channel_page, 2002

People , Thinking , Daughters

“Those who have had great passions are happy all their lives and would be unhappy to have been cured of them.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Ceux qui ont eu de grandes passions se trouvent toute leur vie heureux, et malheureux, d'en être guéris.
Maxim 485.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Passion